2011 achievements and goals for 2012

LPP is proud to highlight the main developments of the past year, and the next steps we intend to take in completing the research phase in 2012.

To review, in 2010 we achieved two key goals—confirming the generation of ion energies of over 100 keV (one billion degrees) and increasing the efficiency of energy transfer into the plasmoid to more than 10% of the total bank energy.

In 2011, the key scientific achievements of our project were:

Demonstrating the continuation of I5 power scaling of the fusion yield—that is, showing that fusion energy per shot continues to increase with the fifth power of the peak current, as predicted by our theory.

While we have made significant progress, we did not move forward as quickly as we had planned. The basic reasons for this are the time it has taken to resolve some of the key engineering issues, such as the switches, and the small size of our staff, ultimately imposed by LPP’s finances. If we look at our progress as measured by number of shots, instead of by number of months, our research has been progressing about as planned. We originally calculated that we would need 2,000-2,500 shots to complete the research program from where we were in January 2011. During 2011, we only fired FF-1 600 times, due to the time needed for various technical upgrades, and our progress was actually greater than we had anticipated for that number of shots.

Looking forward, we expect in the coming year to achieve the following major goals:

Boosting yield even further with shorter electrodes, which allow higher gas densities.

Achieving giga-gauss magnetic fields in the plasmoids.

Demonstrating the quantum magnetic field effect’s reduction in X-ray cooling

Demonstrating scientific feasibility with pB11 fuel.

Achieving these goals depends on further upgrades to FF-1, including an even faster set of switches under design by a leading commercial supplier and, critically, obtaining funds to hire at least two more full-time staff.

Above: The interior of FF-1’s anode, etched by the electron beams of hundreds of fusion shots…